


Kept, like a Thing

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [8]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Backstory, Child Abuse, Gen, Imprisonment, daemon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 00:40:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5396270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cheedo grows up with a golden compass in a stone Vault. She is a treasure, but she's not worth as much as the alethiometer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kept, like a Thing

Cheedo is kept in the Vault, like all Joe’s other treasures, like his Wives and his alethiometer. He calls her his diamond in the rough, found from the children of the Citadel breeders, a girl who can see truth in shimmering needles and can speak clearly and whose daemon knows the shapes of tiny griffins and horses and other fantastical beasts. A stolen full-life child, fed green and apples and clear water for all of the life she can remember. 

She grows quick, and tall, and water-soft. There is a room all her own, off to the side, where there are no windows and the door is as heavy wood rarer than gold. That’s where she reads the alethiometer, she and Jiemba. If Joe likes her answers, she is allowed out to sit at the feet of the Wives while they entertain. If she is good, she and Jiemba are allowed out for the day, to splash in the Vault pool and look out the wide windows and touch the potted plants. 

There are some days when her answers make Joe angry; furious, he stomps and roars and does not hit her, because she is holding the alethiometer and that is irreplaceable. But he slams the wooden door behind him, and locks it with a vicious snap, and the Wives are sobbing when he leaves. And Cheedo is left in the dark, watching the oil run out of her lamps with Jiemba a Maine Coon cat, huge and soft and comforting, crouched in her lap. 

“He’ll come back,” she says, fingers dug into his fur.

“Before the lights go out?” Jiemba whispers. And she does not answer, because she doesn’t know. And both of them look at the alethiometer, sitting on her bed, glittering gold in the firelight. They do not ask. There are many, many things they do not ask. It’s not that they’re forbidden to do so. (Though they are; Joe will throw them from the balcony, he will crush her fingers into bloody pulp. But who would know, if they are alone in the dark? Would he know? Cheedo asks Jiemba, and her daemon only gulps and doesn’t answer, clever lemur fingers clutching at the golden compass.) 

They don’t ask anything Joe hasn’t asked; don’t ask what will happen when Jiemba settles, and Cheedo gets older. What will happen if she asks the truth for herself. She repeats Joe’s questions, and sometimes she goes out into the Vault, and sometimes she is locked in her room for weeks on end. Sometimes the oil runs out, and she is left in the dark. She is always left in the dark. 

 


End file.
